Buying extravagant gifts isn’t in Caroline Fafara’s budget this year, but she’s doing it anyway – to show her gratitude to her parents.
They’re providing child care most workdays for Ms. Fafara’s son, 3, and they refuse to accept any pay.
“It’s a hard situation. We feel like we owe them a lot … but they refuse money from us,” Ms. Fafara says. Her parents deflect her offers by saying, “We worked hard so we would be able to do this one day,” she says. Nevertheless, Ms. Fafara still tries “to reward them with extravagant gifts, things that aren’t really necessary,” such as a Coach purse for her mother. Providing the luxuries “makes me feel better,” she says.
While child-care help from grandparents can raise touchy issues as we’ve written before, there’s no topic more treacherous than pay. And it’s no small matter, with 40% of grandparents who live near their grandchildren providing care regularly.
To pay or not? The right answer varies by family, therapists say. Some grandparents regard child care as a labor of love and can afford to do it for free. Others may need the income. (The issue also goes the other way, with some seniors wondering whether they should compensate their children as caregivers in formal “caregiver contracts,” as we’ve written about previously in the Journal.
It’s best to just sit down and talk about the issue, therapists say — but be aware that it may unearth old family tensions and roles. For example, “some children never feel like they got enough from Mom (or Dad)” and thus feel free babysitting “is owed to them,” says Geraldine Kerr, a Morristown, N.J., family therapist.